Founder of Kiva.org to Speak at World’s First Virtual Fundraising Conference
The Resource Alliance (RA) is announcing the launch of IFC Online — a virtual fundraising conference that will take place on May 12-14, 2009.
Premal Shah, the founder of the groundbreaking micro-finance website Kiva.org – will be one of two plenary speakers at the first-ever global virtual fundraising conference this May.
He will be joined as a plenary speaker at the event by Ramya Raghavan, manager of nonprofits and activism at YouTube.
Both are part of a roster of renowned international experts who will present a series of webinars on digital and new media fundraising to a predicted global audience of more than 1,000 fundraisers.
“This is a natural development for us,” says RA chief executive Simon Collings. “With fundraising moving into digital at an ever increasing rate, we need to deliver our highest quality training to fundraisers through the same medium they are using.
“We dipped our toes in the water with a series of webinars last year and their success leaves me in no doubt that IFC Online is exactly what the international fundraising community has been waiting for.”
IFC Online – which the RA intends to make an annual event – will be the organisation’s third flagship international conference. It joins the International Fundraising Congress (IFC) held every year in Holland, and the International Workshop on Resource Mobilisation, staged annual at different locations in the Global South.
Collings says: “For this first year of IFC Online, we have put together a programme that focuses exclusively on new media fundraising because we think that it will be digital fundraisers who will be the early adopters of this new education format.
“However, our intention for the future is to expand the programme to encompass the whole fundraising portfolio and attract more and more fundraisers from all disciplines.”
RA’s partner in IFC Online is US online training provider Forum for Fundraising; while Learning Times, an online community for American training professionals, has been engaged to host the conference website.
IFC Online programme
The IFC Online programme consists of 10 60-minute practical ‘workshops’ (including 30 minutes Q&A) and three 45-minute plenaries (including a 15-minute Q&A session).
Each workshop will be delivered twice over the three-day period from 12-14 May, 2009; plenaries will be delivered once only.
Plenary sessions (60 minutes)
- Plenary 1: Using video to connect with your donors and prospects. Ramya Raghavan, manager of nonprofits and activism at YouTube
- Plenary 2: Getting inside the donor’s head to create effective online fundraising. Premal Shah, president of Kiva.org
Workshops (90 minutes)
- Developing a digital strategy for your organisation. Jason Potts (UK) – THINK Consulting Solutions
- Engaging the mobile and social network ‘trysumers’: converting web visitors and activists into donors. Marcello Iniarra (Argentina) – consultant
- Maximizing the value of your donors with an integrated direct response strategy – online, mail, phone, mobile, direct dialogue, and major donor. Mal Warwick (USA) – Mal Warwick Associates
- Cultivating major donor relationships online. Nick Allen (USA) – Donordigital
- Making social media work, from walkathon personal pages to Facebook. Mike Johnston (Canada) – HJC
More to be announced. Programme subject to change.
As well as the educational sessions there will be an online community with member introduction areas, downloadable materials, and topic-based discussion areas. Once the conference is under way, the site will take on the buzz and the frenzied pace of the best offline conferences.
Delegates can log on from anywhere – all that is required is a good connection speed on and access to a phone line. The cost of registering for IFC Online is US$275 (£190).
For more information about IFC Online, visit www.fundraisingonline.com or contact Alan Bird, marketing and communications director, at alan@resource-alliance.org.
